Found a planet the existence of which contradicts the laws of physics

24.06.2016

With the help of a telescope “Kepler”, an international team of scientists have discovered orbiting the star subgiant K2-39 a huge exoplanet that is so close to its sun that had long been destroyed, but remains intact. Lead to the destruction of the planet K2-39b, according to the researchers, was the influence of tidal forces, but this did not happen.

photo: morguefile.com

Tidal forces arise in the objects freely moving in a nonuniform force field. As you can guess from their names, the main manifestation of these forces on the Earth are the tides. This is due to the fact that the Earth is a modest-sized planet, and the Sun — not too big star, besides they are at a respectful distance from each other. However, none of these conditions does not correspond to a situation in which there is a K2-39b, therefore, the impact of tidal forces on it had become very destructive, reports Phys.org.

According to scientists, the diameter K2-39b eight times, and the mass is about 50 times more than Earth. It revolves around the star, also greatly surpassing the Sun in size and its orbit is very close among all the planets around giants discovered to date. Exoplanet revolves around its star at a distance many times smaller than the distance between the Sun and the nearest planet, mercury. Year on K2-39b takes only 4.6 days.

Experts believe that relatively soon on a cosmic scale — only 150 million years — the planet will still be destroyed if during that time its orbit will remain unchanged. At the same time, the fact that this has not happened so far, scientists seem to be more than curious.